vorsprung wrote:Another issue is this. The money and power and influence of the CTC is based on it's members. So they are all going to have to rebrand too. It isn't just a dictat that can be sent from the top

It will be a year or two before we redo the jersey. And I will keep wearing my old one.

These little groups over the entire country will have branding stuff to realign.

vorsprung wrote:Another issue is this. The money and power and influence of the CTC is based on it's members. So they are all going to have to rebrand too. It isn't just a dictat that can be sent from the top

It will be a year or two before we redo the jersey. And I will keep wearing my old one.

These little groups over the entire country will have branding stuff to realign.

CTC Heart of England (dissolved in September 2015) had club jerseys with the logo .... we're now Heart of England Cycling Club so the rebrand was solved by issuing every member with a big fat felt pen to scrub out the CTC logo on the jersey

Everyones into retro now anyway. Sod this new look malarky. Polish off the old winged wheel logo and lets go back to that. The Hipsters would love it. Instant uptick in popularity with urban and commuting cyclists. Job done.

I wouldn't bet the farm on CTC being retained ... that's a recipe for more confusion ......... but then again? The message from the boss yesterday looked pretty clear about the new name and brand being what was going to happen as a clean sweep.

Psamathe wrote:I remember many years ago when I worked for a significant (international) retail electronics manufacturer, there was a product which had a development name everybody assumed would be carried through to be the product name. That was until a French girl working for the company pointed out that in French the name meant "little prick".

Well, without the little, that's what cuk (actually çük) in Turkish is! And I think kuk in Swedish would be pronounced like we'd read CUK, too.

Psamathe wrote:I remember many years ago when I worked for a significant (international) retail electronics manufacturer, there was a product which had a development name everybody assumed would be carried through to be the product name. That was until a French girl working for the company pointed out that in French the name meant "little prick".

Well, without the little, that's what cuk (actually çük) in Turkish is! And I think kuk in Swedish would be pronounced like we'd read CUK, too.

Beyond the Kerb wrote:CRITICAL WORDS19 FEBRUARY 2016Yesterday a couple of tweets popped up, pointing out a new trademark filing from the CTC. It was widely known that a major rebranding (and revision of strategy) was in the pipeline, and this was the first publicly available taste of that change.There is little doubt in my mind, and that of many others, that rebranding the CTC—the Cyclists’ Touring Club—is wise. I’m a member of CTC, but I think that making cycling accessible to more people (for the side-effects that it brings) is hugely more important than a club for enthusiasts. Besides, there’s no reason to abandon that role; it’s simply being dropped from the organisation’s primary identity.The most obvious reason for change is that touring is only a small part of the CTC’s modern day function, which makes the name unrepresentative and anachronistic. It’s been “CTC” for a long time now, but of course that’s not exactly self-explanatory, and any explicit explanation obviously has to be saddled with a lengthy caveat about the “touring” bit.But actually, although it’s obviously problematic, I don’t think “touring” is the key issue.I’ll come back to that.THE BRANDThe new branding is “Cycling UK”, and the logo is as follows.

The visual branding is… not my taste. The Cocon typeface, a quasi-brush stroke sanserif, is presumably intended to covey a soft, welcoming image; but combine this with the “we are” prefix (à la “We are Macmillan”—which also uses a brush stroke in its logotype) and the “UK” suffix used by countless charities, as well as the insipid colours and—if I’m brutally honest—it feels plaintive. It makes me feel that cycling might be some sort of currently untreatable genetic disease that demands sympathy. “Asthma UK”, “Prostate Cancer UK”, “Bipolar UK”, “Pain UK”, “Blind Children UK”, “Diabetes UK”… “Cycling UK”?But, though I personally dislike the visual design (which is in no small part a subjective matter) and have concerns about the name, neither of these is the real problem.The real problem—from a design point of view and, crucially, from the more significant messaging point of view—is the strapline that’s been clumsily dumped below the main logotype.(You can almost replay in your mind the meeting at which some objectors to the original designs demanded the addition of a line such as this, and I can only imagine that the brand designer has made it look completely incongruous as a matter of spite. If that’s how it came about then, as a fan of passive-aggressivism and a part-time designer among other things, frankly I’d be tempted to do the same.)THE STRAPLINEThat strapline: “The cyclists’ champion.”The cyclists’ champion.Maybe it’s not obvious.Here’s the fail: the word “cyclists”.Let’s consider this rebranding: from the “Cyclists’ Touring Club” to “Cycling UK”. The new name may not be without issues, but it gets one thing exactly right: it replaces “cyclists” with “cycling”.These are critical words.Critical to communicating the right message.Why so? Because the main, if not entire, point of this exercise is to support the enablement of cycling as a normal, safe, everyday mode of transport; to make cycling accessible and appealing to far more people. To make cycling accessible and appealing to people who aren’t cyclists.THE STRATEGYThe CTC’s future strategy likely rests heavily on securing large public grants. Politically, this process must be delivered in one of two contexts: either that of funding for cyclists or that of funding for cycling. And, politically, these are very different. “More government money to improve cycling [for everyone]” plays out rather differently among the public at large to “more government money given to cyclists“.Of course, there is a broader debate as to whether funding via a charity that starts to look a little like a Quango is appropriate, or whether the only way to achieve real results is to keep hammering away at the DfT and the various highways authorities until general highway provision includes infrastructure for cycling (as well as other non-motorised vehicles and mobility scooters) as part of a balanced and sustainable transport mix. After all, it’s not as if Sustrans—a long-established Quango charity in much the same space that Cycling UK will be in—has achieved anything of substance other than cementing cycling’s status as nothing more than a leisure activity.THE FUTUREIt will be interesting to see where the CTC goes with its strategy. I have some faith that it will be progressive, though I remain cynically wary that these things are often too much about encouragement and too little about enablement. But these are early days.I do hope, though, that the “cyclists’ champion” strapline is dropped.

Philip Benstead | Life Member Former CTC Councillor/TrusteeOrganizing events and representing cyclist in southeast since 1988Bikeability Instructor/Mechanic